


after you knew me

by fireflyslove



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Az thinks Crowley used the holy water on himself instead of Ligur, Canon Parallel, Hey we're not dead, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-28 13:41:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19813471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireflyslove/pseuds/fireflyslove
Summary: Crowley thinks Aziraphale's dead and Aziraphale thinks Crowley's dead, and they're both messes.Or: The apocaversion, but they think they're imagining the other because they're dumbasses





	after you knew me

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Suicide mention, though no one actually committed or attempted suicide.
> 
> HEEEEEEEY It's my bread and butter fic, the 'back from the dead' reunion, complete with imagining the other's presence!
> 
> Title, as always, from The Band Perry's Run Away (but this time bastardized)

Aziraphale appeared in Heaven on fire. 

He had expected discorporation, but somehow, after six thousand years, his body wasn’t giving up that easily. He was immediately drenched by the automatic sprinkler system, and soaked to the skin in an instant. The angel in charge of whatever was going on, sporting the most ridiculous facial hair Aziraphale had ever seen (and he had known Crowley in the 1860s), began yelling at him.

Aziraphale didn’t really process what the angel was saying, something about scorched goods and Aziraphale’s long-missing sword, but instead his attention was focused on the rotating globe just off to the right. 

He knew this wasn’t the proper way to get back to earth, but… most likely the front entrance had been shut tight. So back this way it was. 

He materialized, still smelling faintly of holy fire (honestly, a smell not that different to hellfire), in the charred remains of his bookshop. Aziraphale looked around himself in dismay, the sodden but still smoking ruins of his life for the last two centuries wafting a particularly bad odor toward him. 

But

There was no time to mourn. He had to get to Crowley and get to Tadfield. This… this he could deal with after the end of the world. (And if the world actually ended, it wouldn’t matter anyway). He walked out to the street through the front door’s former location. On the sidewalk, his foot crunched on some debris, and he looked down. 

The shattered lenses of Crowley’s sunglasses reflect his face in a wild kaleidoscope of color. He picked them up with a shaking hand, and looked over his shoulder at the smoke drifting down the street. 

Heedless of traffic laws (and reality), he gathered his essence about him and sped off to Crowley’s flat. He hadn’t actually ever been inside, but he knew the address well enough. He sped up the stairs and halted just before the door. It was open, obviously by inhuman means, the lock fairly melted into the floor.

The entire place smelled of brimstone and something else, something that oozed into Aziraphale’s nose and burned. He could smell Crowley under it all, the clove-and-sulfur-and-green-growing-things that lingered in his back room long after the demon had departed, but the cloying smell overlayed everything. He entered cautiously, hyperaware with all of his senses, human and metaphysical. There’s no sound inside other than the faint whirr of the air system. 

As he headed toward the back of the flat, the cloying smell grew ever thicker, and he nearly trod in it, his hand shooting out to catch his balance on the wall. A slowly spreading thick ooze soaked the floor. 

Aziraphale had seen a demon encounter holy water exactly once in his existence, sometime back in the beginning when Hell had had a few more operatives on Earth than they did in these latter years. 

And this was exactly the same thing that happened. His gaze shot across the room, and he saw, there on Crowley’s desk, a tartan thermos, the lid loose. 

Despair ripped through Aziraphale and he backed up until his body hit the opposite wall. A thousand thoughts shot through his head, but the one that kept circling back 

_ You could have prevented this, Aziraphale.  _

_ Gone off with him, left the humans.  _

_ He’d still be alive.  _

_ This is your fault. _

_ This is your fault.  _

_ This is _

_ Your _

_ Fault. _

Aziraphale had not considered himself, especially of late, a very good angel. And now… now he had defied Heaven for a demon. (a demon he loved.) And the demon was gone. He stood there, back against the wall, for what seemed like an eternity (it was about 3 minutes). 

The world was still ending, and he had two choices. He could go off to Alpha Centauri, live there for the rest of eternity. Or he could try to stop the apocalypse and probably die in the process. He knew what Crowley would do in Aziraphale’s absence. He’d suck it up and save the world. Because Crowley loved humanity. And Aziraphale loved Crowley. 

So he would save humanity. 

He left the flat, glancing once more at it while he stood on the street. Then he snapped his wings into the mortal plane (a direct violation of Heaven’s orders) and took to the sky. 

-

As it turned out, Crowley wasn’t dealing with Aziraphale’s supposed absence in the way Aziraphale thought he would. He was getting rather spectacularly drunk, and swearing at a book. 

Just as he was telling Agnes Nutter off for not predicting Aziraphale’s demise, a piece of paper fell out of the book. Aziraphale’s neat handwriting spelled out exactly where the end of the world was going to take place. 

Crowley took a moment to glare at the book, and then another to glare at the piece of paper. 

Even after being vanquished by some unknown legion of Hell, Aziraphale was still causing trouble for Crowley. He could pretend he didn’t know this, didn’t know where to go to stop the end of the world… but Aziraphale would be disappointed in him. 

Crowley loved humanity, he truly did, but that wasn’t enough for him to sacrifice himself for them. But Aziraphale, he hadn’t wanted humanity to burn either, and now he had handed Crowley the missing link.

Crowley considered Alpha Centauri for just another split second, but then, no. He would go to Tadfield, and try to prevent the end of the world. And if he died in the process, well, maybe there was some type of afterlife for celestial and infernal beings, and God willing, he’d see Aziraphale again. 

He sobered up, shoved the paper back into the book, and headed for the Bentley. 

-

Crowley’s journey to Tadfield was much like it had happened in another universe, Hastur found himself discorporated, and Crowley arrived at the airfield in a car aflame. Although events proceeded apace, neither Crowley nor Aziraphale realized that the other was indeed, alive. Both were convinced that this was some projection of the Enemy or of their own imagination or of Adam’s doing. 

For Aziraphale’s part, he believed that the Crowley he saw was a projection of his own Divine Will. He spoke to it like he would have spoken to Crowley, threatened it with a flaming sword, (how he thought he stopped Time, he didn’t even try to rationalize).

Crowley saw Aziraphale, but more than that, he Saw Aziraphale, the bright shining core of him, and Knew (he was wrong, of course) that this was a projection the Antichrist had put into his head to make him play the game. (Distraught singed demons weren’t the most rational of creatures)

Hours later, they’re sitting on a bench waiting for a bus that wasn’t going to Oxford, and Crowley was well into another bottle of wine. He hadn’t died in the Apocalypse, but… well, Hell was likely to come calling soon. He hoped he’d see Aziraphale after they destroyed him. 

Aziraphale wasn’t anywhere near drunk, and the definitely-not-Crowley he saw out of the corner of his eye when he dared glance that way was suspiciously lifelike. But then, Aziraphale had had a  _ very _ stressful day, and if this was his mind’s way of rationalizing Crowley’s death, he wasn’t going to argue with it. 

On the bus, the other’s hallucination conveniently takes the opposite seat, and they each think of how polite that is. They don’t speak, but their hands brush intermittently, and Crowley stuck a pinky out to wrap around Aziraphale’s.

When they arrived back at Crowley’s flat, Aziraphale froze in the doorway, the smell of melted demon still lingering in the air. He had somehow forgotten that the evidence would still be there.

Crowley didn’t notice Aziraphale’s sudden stop at the front door, he had decided that this was Adam’s idea of a gift, even if the boy didn’t know exactly what he was doing. The smell of Ligur’s demise still permeated the flat, and he snapped his fingers to get rid of it, intent on obtaining a new bottle of alcohol before collapsing into his bed and waiting for Hell to come find him. 

Aziraphale thought it was kind of his mind to have Crowley get rid of the demon remains so he didn’t have to do it consciously, but rather rude for Crowley to keep drinking, not even acknowledging his presence, despite the fact that the demon was a projection of his imagination.

An hour later, they both collapsed into Crowley’s spacious bed, not noticing that the mattress dipped suspiciously for something that wasn't real. Both were out before either could will the light off.

-

Aziraphale woke to a strange weight on his chest. He took a moment to remember what had happened. He slept so infrequently that waking up was always disorienting, but this was especially odd. The bed wasn’t his own, it was far firmer than his mattress, and more than that, the sense of space beyond his closed eyes was greater than the close, book-filled walls of his bedroom.

The smell reached him before his recollection did, cloves-and-sulfur-and-green-growing-things underlaid by soot and woodsmoke and hellsmoke. His eyes snapped open as his memory returned, and the weight resolved itself into a head resting on his chest. Red hair, soot smudged and wildly disarrayed, rose and fell with Aziraphale’s rapid breaths. 

But more than that, a Presence butted up against his. There was no way he could be imagining Crowley’s metaphysical Presence. He raised a hand and pushed it through Crowley’s hair, revelling at the texture of the strands under his fingers.

“Crowley?” he murmured softly.

-

Crowley woke to find his face pressed against stiff fabric. Everything was a blur, but the great yawning gulf of Aziraphale’s loss made itself immediately apparent. He tightened his eyes against the unbidden tears. He had apparently wrapped himself around a pile of pillows in his sleep, and he was just ready to untangle himself when a hand ran itself through his hair. 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale’s soft voice sounded almost in his ear.

Crowley’s head shot up and around to stare Aziraphale in the face.

“You’re dead,” Crowley said flatly.

“I thought the same about you,” Aziraphale said. 

“You--what?” Crowley said. 

“I came back from Heaven, found my bookshop a ruin and you, well, there was a melted demon on your floor, and an open thermos of holy water,” Aziraphale said.

“You… you… I thought Hell had gotten their filthy hands on you, angel,” Crowley said. 

“Only humans and my own stupidity,” Aziraphale said. 

“So you’re real?” Crowley said.

“I could ask you the same, my dear.”

Crowley pressed his hand along Aziraphale’s face, “I’m real, Zira.”

Aziraphale smiled softly.

“So somehow we both survived the end of the world,” Crowley said. 

“Indeed,” Aziraphale said. 

As in another universe, they took the other’s place and didn’t perish at the hands of the Heavenly and Hellish host, but instead found themselves returned to Earth. 

They were sitting on the bench, back in their own bodies, when something occurred to Crowley. 

“You thought I’d offed myself, didn’t you?” he asked quietly.

“I did,” Aziraphale said, not looking at the demon. “I thought… well, I thought you’d decided Alpha Centauri wasn’t an option, and holy water was the only way out. When I gave it to you, it was my greatest fear.”

“Oh, angel,” Crowley said, and his hand brushed against Aziraphale’s again. The angel flipped it so his hand was palm up, and Crowley smudged his fingers over until their hands were intertwined. “I’m so sorry.”

“We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley laughed once. “That we are.”

-

Later, after the Ritz, they’re standing in the bookshop, and Aziraphale was brimming with excitement, he could already see six different books from where he stood, but Crowley was nearly vibrating.

“Crowley, is something wrong?” he asked.

Crowley’s face twitched, and he opened his mouth a few times, a blush spreading across his face. “No,” he muttered.

“Then why are you practically ready to discorporate?” 

Crowley stared at a point just over Aziraphale’s head. “Would it be too much to ask for a hug?” 

Whatever Aziraphale was expecting, that wasn’t it. He didn’t say anything, only reached forward, and pulled the demon into his arms. Crowley had too many bones, or perhaps too few, but he melted into Aziraphale’s embrace, his arms coming up to clutch at the fabric of Aziraphale’s jacket. 

And then Aziraphale wasn’t holding a human-shaped demon, but rather a snake-shaped demon, coils wrapped around his body. 

“Thanksss,” Crowley said. 

“Of course, my dear,” Aziraphale said. 

Crowley flicked out his forked tongue and licked Aziraphale’s smiling cheek. 

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found anywhere a snek licks @fireflyslove


End file.
